As per our Terms of Trade, Get Cars Japan does not entertain claims for damage that occurs during container shipping. However, the container loading companies often take responsibility and offer some compensation if it is clear that the damage was caused due to their loading.
In order to make such claims, it is necessary to ascertain that the damage was due to the “vanning” (loading) technique used. Therefore, the customer needs to supply photos of the damage prior to unloading the container.
Unfortunately, there are times when certain combinations of vehicles in a container CAN be loaded, but the shipping yard only agrees to do it on a “no claim” basis. That is to say, they will load the container but not pay any repair costs for damage incurred.
While Get Cars Japan would like to alert customers and give them an opportunity to hold back their vehicle and wait for a combination that CAN be claimed should damage occur, due to the current shipping climate we sometimes need to make the decision without consultation. The main factors that place us in such a position are as follows;
- Most container yards are full and not accepting any vehicles
- Some container yards are only giving us 2 container loading slots per week when we need at least 10.
- Cancelling a booking incurs a $200 cancellation fee and we lose one of our container loading slots to another company.
- We have very little time to consult all customers whose cars are to be loaded into any such “no claim” container as the booking has usually been made. We always try to shuffle cars between containers to minimize the number of containers shipping as “no claim” but unfortunately we sometimes have no choice (other than decreasing the number of cars in the container which both raises shipping costs for customers, and leaves an extra car on the dock.
- It is only in very rare cases that container damage occurs even on “no claim basis” loading.
While we will do our best to alert customers that their vehicle is shipping such a “no claim” container, we strongly recommend you take out separate insurance (which we can arrange) which will hopefully give you peace of mind and cover any expenses that arise from a rare case when damage does occur.
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